Upper ocean heat content has increased significantly over the past two decades. An estimated 70 percent of the excess heat has accumulated in the top 2,000 feet of the ocean, and the rest has flowed into deeper ocean layers.

In 2013, global average sea level was 1.5 inches above the 1993-2010 average, which is the highest yearly average in the satellite record (1993-present). Overall, sea level continues to rise at a rate of one-eighth of an inch per year.

Why on Earth are climate scientists so interested in the West Antarctic ice sheet? This remote region of the seventh continent has been the subject of many recent research explorations--the results of which have been described in the news with words like “collapse,” “irreversible,” and “huge.”

For the billions of people in Asia who depend on the Indian Monsoon for the majority of their yearly rainfall, the precise location where the Pacific warms during El Niño may be the difference between a relatively normal year and a devastating drought.

Ocean waves slowly eat away coastal cliffs the world over, but in parts of Alaska, these processes have accelerated due to changing climate. These photos document a cliff collapse near Drew Point in the late 2000s.

Add a new item to the list of things that have migrated in response to climate change: the latitude where hurricanes reach their maximum intensity. The shift was accompanied by increasing vertical wind shear near the equator.

A pool of warm water lurking beneath the surface of the western Pacific has been slowly sloshing eastward in the past few months. This traveling wave of warm water is one of the signs that climate conditions are favorable for the emergence of El Niño later this year.